William H. Ashley was born in 1778 in Virginia, the county of his birth being variously given as Powhatan or Chesterfield. He came to Missouri between 1803 and 1805, when he was listed as an inhabitant and freeholder in Ste. Genevieve. Ashley had both a political and military career in Missouri, as justice of the peace for Ste. Genevieve after 1806, and as a captain (later colonel and general) in the Missouri militia. During the War of 1812, he manufactured gunpowder in Potosi and he was commissioned lieutenant colonel in the Washington County militia in 1814. Moving to St. Louis in 1819, Ashley continued his political career as a candidate for lieutenant governor and president of the senate. Throughout the 1820s, Ashley was a participant in the fur trade, taking a number of hunters into the Rocky Mountains beginning in 1821, and made his last journey to the mountains in the spring of 1826, selling his interests in the fur trade to Smith, Jackson and Sublette. He continued to supply trade goods and supplies for the fur trade, but focused on politics, as congressman from Missouri, 1831-1834. Ashley died of pneumonia March 26, 1838.